Your feet squeeze into uncomfortable shoes, help you stand upright, and carry you through long days. But at the end of the night, they often don’t get the TLC they deserve. Suppose you are looking to change all that, you are probably wondering how to start going about finding a foot massager that suits your needs and budget while standing up to plenty of use. Is a basic, manual massager enough to help bring your tootsies back to life? Or do you need something with more bells and whistles? We put the TheraFlow Dual Foot Massager Roller to the test. Read on to find out more.
Design: Simple but effective
The TheraFlow Dual Foot Massager Roller doesn’t look fancy, but it’s expertly designed to provide maximum relief. It has 10 independently moving rollers (five for each foot) designed for trigger point stimulation and acupoint reflexology. Eight of the rollers are covered in ridges that help relieve pressure and tension in your trigger points, while the remaining two rollers (one on each side) are each covered with 24 protruding nubs. These nubs gently dig into specific acupressure points and provide deep reflexology. Since the foot massager is manual, you control the massage’s deepness by pushing your legs down or releasing them to apply more or less pressure. Its manual design also means it’s free of cords or wires so that we could move it around freely. As a bonus, it’s small, lightweight design makes it easy to store in any closet or even right under the couch. If you’re like us and don’t know much about foot reflexology, the foot massager also includes a handy chart illustrating the feet’ parts that align with some regions of the body.
Performance: Simple but effective
Because of its simplistic design, we weren’t expecting much from the TheraFlow Dual Foot Massager Roller. We were pleasantly surprised at how well it relieved tension—and not just in our feet, but in the rest of our body, too. To properly use the foot massager, the manufacturer instructs you to sit comfortably with your thighs parallel to the ground and your legs at a 90-degree angle with your thighs. We were a bit disappointed that we couldn’t sink back into the couch to use the massager after a long day of running errands and hitting the gym. Still, we wanted to make sure we were adequately following directions to get an accurate massage assessment. At first, we positioned the foot massager so that the acupressure rollers with the protruding nubs were under the heel. The toes and heels of an average women’s size 8 foot will hang off the massager slightly, but the ergonomic design still hugged the arches nicely, so it was barely noticeable. It might have been because we haven’t had proper foot massages in a while, but the massage hurt a little bit even with medium pressure. However, it was that good kind of hurt that you only get with a deep, targeted massage. When we flipped the massager around so that the rollers with the protruding knobs were by our toes, instead of our heels, the massage intensity dropped considerably. In this position, we felt like we needed a little more pressure. After rolling our feet back and forth randomly for five minutes, we used the reflexology chart to target specific areas of pain. For example, it says that the area right underneath the big toe connects to the neck. We rolled that area over the acupressure roller for another five minutes (to reach the manufacturer’s recommendation of a maximum of 10 minutes at a time) to see if it could relieve some chronic neck pain. While there wasn’t a dramatic rush of relief, we were pleasantly surprised by how much the tension in our feet and the rest of our body was relieved after a few days of regular use. Within a week, the actual massage hurt less (even with the same amount of pressure). The pain and tension in our feet went from a 6 to a 3, and the neck pain improved from an 8 to a 6 with no other lifestyle changes. One thing to keep in mind is that you do have to be an active participant in the foot massage, unlike battery-operated or electric foot massagers. In addition to making sure you’re seated with the proper posture, you also have to manually move your feet back and forth across the roller, adjusting your foot angle to hit the areas that need massaging. The TheraFlow doesn’t give you the luxury of sitting back and letting the machine do the work. If your main goal is tension and pain relief, this isn’t a big deal, especially since the manufacturer recommends only doing around 10 minutes of massaging at a time. But if you want a foot massager that will allow you to sit back and relax while it does all of the work, the TheraFlow isn’t it. The TheraFlow also can’t massage the tops of your feet, since it’s a manual foot roller massager. While there’s no doubt that the bottoms of our feet needed more tender, loving care than the top, other more advanced foot massagers can do both—and that’s something we can appreciate.
Price: You get what you pay for
The TheraFlow Dual Foot Massager Roller isn’t fancy, but it’s what we expected for the $24.99 retail price. While it doesn’t offer any advanced features, it provides pretty significant foot and whole-body tension relief, especially when you make it a part of your daily routine.
Competition: More features available, if you’re willing to spend the cash
Moji Foot Massager: Like the TheraFlow, the Moji Foot Massager is a budget-friendly, travel-friendly option that retails for a similar price of $24.99. It has six rolling spheres that you can use to manually apply pressure to all areas of your feet to help you relieve tension and stress. While you won’t get any special features with the Moji, it’s designed for use while standing and sitting, and it’s small enough to throw in your gym bag or purse so that you can take it anywhere you need to. Miko Shiatsu Home Foot Massager Machine The Miko isn’t really on the same level as the TheraFlow since the Miko retails for $140. But if you don’t mind shelling out some extra cash and want to invest in a foot massager that requires less active participation, it might be the right choice for you. The Miko Shiatsu Home Foot Massager Machine is an electric-powered machine that combines controllable massage pressure with added heat. It also has the luxury of remote control operation. If you’re looking for an efficient foot massager that can help relieve soreness and tension without putting a massive dent in your wallet, the TheraFlow Dual Foot Massager Roller has you covered. Although it’s certainly not the most advanced option out there, it delivers impressive results without the need for batteries or access to an electrical outlet.
